Born on May 9: Billy Joel, sometimes nicknamed the boxer pianist

He was born in the Bronx district of New York in 1949 and has been telling us stories, often very personal, on the piano for over half a century.

German Jewish, his father moved to the United States to escape Nazism while his mother, also Jewish, spent her childhood in Great Britain. Often very stripped down, some of Billy Joel's most moving songs are inspired by events that have marked his destiny. "Vienna" (on his best-known album "The Stranger" in 1977) thus tells of his reunion with a father who returned to Europe after divorcing his mother, while "Leningrad" (on the album "Storm Front" in 1989) juxtaposes his childhood memories of the Cold War with those gathered during his 1987 Russian tour. At the time, Mikhail Gorbachev was beginning to open up Communist USSR, but the Iron Curtain hadn't yet fallen. Although Elton John had preceded him in 1979, this tour, which was to symbolise the thawing, at least culturally, between the two countries, turned into a technical nightmare for the singer: deplorable acoustics and sound. Billy Joel has never set foot in Russia again. In his song, he obviously glosses over these small annoyances which nonetheless managed to irritate him!

Not very tall, nor very muscular, young Billy was regularly bullied in the schoolyard because he was more interested in classical music than the exploits of baseball stars or the movements of the first rock stars. To finally earn respect, he began taking boxing lessons and even fought a few matches in the "golden gloves" category. Luckily for his fans, music eventually triumphed. Victory by KO!

Between 1971 and 1993, he recorded twelve studio albums in which he distils musical (and sociological) postcards about the places where he lived. "Piano Man" for instance (the title track of his 1973 album) recounts the ups and downs of his early days as a bar pianist in Los Angeles. While Ú speaks about the fascination exerted by an Upper East Side socialite on a little guy from modest neighbourhoods. Like him...

His last album "Fantasies & Delusions" (2001), recorded with Anglo-Korean pianist Richard Hyung-ki Joo, marks a final point in his discography as well as a return to his first loves, classical music, as the artist gives up the microphone to devote himself solely to the piano.

In residence at the Madison Square Garden (the legendary venue in Manhattan that can accommodate up to 20,000 spectators), Billy Joel performed there with metronomic regularity every month for years until July 2024. In total, he graced the stage nearly 160 times. An absolute record, needless to say!

(MH with Stéphane Soupart - Photo: © Etienne Tordoir)

Photo: Billy Joel on stage at Forest-National in Brussels (Belgium) on 8 October 1990